The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [255]
16. By diverting their attention from the business before them to statues and pictures,
17. And to roofs curiously fretted, the usual embellishments of such places among the other Greeks.
18. The people assembled in the open air, and heard the kings and senators.
19. It was not allowed to any of their order to give advice, but only either to ratify or reject what was proposed to them by the king or senate.
20. But because it happened afterwards that the people, by adding or omitting words, perverted the sense of propositions,
21. The kings inserted into the Rhetra, or grand covenant, a clause saying that if the people did this it would be lawful for the leaders to refuse ratification.
22. Although Lycurgus had used all the qualifications possible in the constitution of his commonwealth,
23. Yet those who succeeded him found the oligarchical element still too dominant,
24. And to check its high temper, established the office of ephor, a hundred and thirty years after Lycurgus’ death.
25. Elatus and his colleagues were the first who had this dignity conferred upon them in the reign of King Theopompus,
26. Who, when his queen criticised him one day that he would leave the regal power less than he had received it from his ancestors, said in answer, ‘No, it will be greater; for it will last longer.’
27. For, indeed, the kings’ prerogative being thus reduced within reasonable bounds, they were at once freed from jealousies and consequent danger,
28. And never experienced the calamities of their neighbours at Messene and Argos,
29. Who, by maintaining the royal prerogative too strictly for want of yielding a little to the populace, lost all.
30. Indeed, whoever will examine the sedition and misgovernment in the bordering nations to whom Sparta was near related in blood and situation, will find in them the best reason to admire the wisdom of Lycurgus.
31. For these three states, in their first rise, were equal, or, if there were any odds, they lay on the side of the Messenians and Argives,
32. Who, in the first allotment, were thought to have been luckier than the Spartans; yet their happiness did not endure,
33. Partly the tyrannical temper of their kings and partly the ungovernableness of the people quickly bringing upon them such disorders,
34. As clearly to show how truly great a blessing the Spartans had had in Lycurgus.
35. After the creation of the senators, Lycurgus’ next task, and indeed the most hazardous, was a new division of lands.
36. For there was an extreme inequality among the people;
37. Their state was overloaded with indigent and necessitous persons, while its whole wealth had centred upon very few.
38. To expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime,
39. And those yet more inveterate diseases of want and superfluity,
40. Lycurgus therefore persuaded rich and poor alike to renounce their properties,
41. And to accept a new division of the land, so that all should live together on an equal footing;
42. Merit to be their only road to eminence, and the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, the one measure of difference between man and man.
43. Upon their consent, he divided the country into thirty thousand equal shares, and the area around the city of Sparta into nine thousand; these he redistributed.
44. A share was enough to yield seventy bushels of grain annually for a man, and twelve for his wife, with a suitable proportion of oil and wine.
45. This he thought sufficient to keep their bodies in health and strength; superfluities they were better without.
46. It is reported, that, as he returned from a journey shortly after the land redistribution, the ground being newly reaped, seeing the stacks all standing equal and alike, he smiled, and said,
47. ‘Laconia looks like one family estate divided among a band of brothers.’
Chapter 4
1. Not contented with this, he resolved to make a division of movables too, that there might be no odious distinction